Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Harper's "Free Vote" Promise has little significance

Stephen Harper has said that he would allow a free vote in the house on the issue of Same Sex Marriage were he elected Prime Minister. Now of course that sounds good, except when you take in to account that out of the 96 Conservatives who voted on bill C-38 only 3 of them actually voted for it.

It's really easy to say you'll offer a free vote when you know the vast majority of your party's MPs are going to tow the party line. That'd be like if I was a candidate for Prime Minister and said that I would allow a free vote on a bill to increase the salary of MPs.

It's all about the word games with the Conservatives, they use a term like Free Vote and people like how it sounds, of course most of them don't follow politics like I do so they'd have no idea how little it actually meant.

I fully agree here. In fact there were far more Liberals and even more Bloc Quebecois members who voted differently than their leader and if you do it on a proportional basis they were a greater percentage of NDP MPs who voted against their leader 1/19 is greater than 3/98. There are a few Conservative candidates who are for same-sex marriage, but almost all of them are in urban ridings the Tories stand no chance at winning. In my riding of Vancouver Centre, the Conservative candidate is for same-sex marriage (Considering the large gay population I don't think there are very many people who do oppose gay marriage in my riding), but the Tories stand no chance at winning.